


The Angel Room: What Happens to a Seraph When You F*ck With The Timeline - Part 1

by CatherineinNB



Series: The Angel Room [23]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angelic Lore, Angels Without Vessels, Anglo-Saxon, Bloodletting, Canon Compliant, Courage, Episode: s14e12 Prophet and Loss, Episode: s14e13 Lebanon, Gen, Genesis - Freeform, Heaven, Junius 11, Latin, Light Spectrums, Magic, Mark of Cain (Supernatural), Medieval Manuscript, Meta, Metafiction, Multidimensional Wavelengths of Celestial Intent, Multiple Religion & Lore Sources, Music, Research, Season/Series 14, Season/Series 14 Spoilers, Spells & Enchantments, Temporal Paradox, The Bodleian Library, The Fall - Freeform, The Great Fall, The Heavenly Choir, The Winchester Gospels (Supernatural), Ultraviolet Light, Warding, Wavelengths, Witches, angel grace, heaven's prison, old english, smiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-14
Updated: 2019-05-14
Packaged: 2020-03-05 12:02:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18828307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatherineinNB/pseuds/CatherineinNB
Summary: Ever wondered what happened in heaven when Sam and Dean messed with the timeline by bringing their father to the present? Yeah, Makael knows. She remembers. And this is how it went down.Author's Note: This all takes place during "Lebanon." I was really interested in seeing more of what heaven would look like if the Apocalypse had ever happened, and this is the result. There will be more than one entry about this. I'm excited. So. Damn. Excited.





	The Angel Room: What Happens to a Seraph When You F*ck With The Timeline - Part 1

**Author's Note:**

> **_The Context:_**  
>  Eight-and-a-half months ago, seraph Makael, formerly of the Heavenly Choir, fled the _Supernatural_ universe after Michael arrived from Apocalypse World.
> 
> Makael had always been good at keeping to herself. It’s why she survived the intra-angel conflicts after the Great Fall. So when Michael started tracking down angels soon after his arrival, Makael decided that it was time to find a new universe to call home. Using the spell that, years ago, propelled the Winchesters into an alternate universe, Makael was ready to make a new life for herself in ours. A quiet life. A human life, much like the one she had lived after the Fall. 
> 
> Then she discovered  _ Supernatural _ .
> 
> She told herself it was boredom, it was curiosity, it was a way to keep herself apprised of events back home that prompted her to start pulling characters into our universe for interviews after each new episode of Season 14 aired. She styled herself a journalist. An interviewer. A fangirl.
> 
> But meeting the Winchesters and their extended family changed her.
> 
> Makael is no longer an angel who stays safely on the sidelines. She’s … changed. Trained, first with Ketch, and then with Castiel. She’s literally fought for the Winchesters. Used her research skills, her talent with magic, and her voice (which used to serenade God in the Throne Room) to help them.
> 
> After weeks of working with them side-by-side in the Bunker, a misunderstanding (what she would call a failure on her part) led to her return to the place where it all started, the place Sam dubbed  _ The Angel Room _ .
> 
> Makael is back on the sidelines—but there’s no way she’s gonna stay there. Keeping to herself? That’s no longer in the cards for this particular seraph.

**_The Story:  
_ ** Makael pushes back from her laptop and chews thoughtfully on her lower lip as she pushes a hand through her sleek dark hair. She’s in full research mode, and hasn’t “come up for air,” as Sam would say, in over twenty-four hours. She rolls her shoulders, loosening them, takes a deep breath, and dives right back in.

It’s been three days she came back from her excursion to help Castiel with Donatello. She’s watched the latest episode, “Prophet and Loss,” which apparently aired while she was back in her own universe with Castiel. She’s still not sure why sometimes the timelines between the two universes sync, and sometimes they don’t. 

And she’s  _ completely _ unsure as to her own feelings about continuing to watch  _ Supernatural.  _ She dithered over it for almost two full days before finally sitting down at her laptop and clicking “play,” and she only did so after she couldn’t stand not knowing whether or not Dean was in the Ma’lak box.

As she viewed the episode, she’d had to remind herself several times that she wasn’t actually spying on Sam and Dean: it was Jared and Jensen, their dopplegängers, that she watched on the screen. She reminded herself that it’s important for her as an ally—albeit a rather ineffectual one, she admits—to know what’s going on with her brother and the Winchesters. And perhaps something she saw in this episode would trigger some useful idea or remind her about a tidbit of information tucked away in her memory, which she could then pass along to Castiel.  

Of course, that didn’t happen. As the credits rolled, Makael tried to ignore the ringing echo of the word “useless” in her memory and instead focus on what she’d learned from watching.

In the end, it was Sam who got Dean to back down, to step back from Billie’s plan. And it was an appeal to Dean’s emotions, rather than to any kind of logic or reason, that worked. Either way, she’s glad, and she rewound and rewatched the entire scene over again—just to reassure herself that Dean really is safe from the box and is back at the Bunker with his family.

“Fuck destiny,” she’d murmured when the Impala’s headlights turned on for the second time around, and her laptop’s screen brightened to white. She chose to interpret that unusual choice of an ending as reason for hope. 

But seeing Sam in the kind of pain that he displayed next to the Impala made her gut clench, and her own eyes tear up, as if she was feeling his emotions by proxy. And that brought a whole other swath of discomfiting thoughts to the fore.

She hadn’t expected to learn something about herself from watching the episode.

Rather than dwell on it, Makael had decided to turn her attention to searching the lore of her current world for information about Michael. Perhaps in this universe there might be information that would be useful to them that did not exist back home.

And  _ that  _ was how she’d ended up diving down the rabbit hole she’s investigating now. 

It all started with a search on anything unusual and angelic in medieval literature. She stumbled across Junius 11: a tenth-century manuscript, written in Old English and formerly ascribed to the Anglo-Saxon poet Cædmon, before that theory was thoroughly discredited. Held at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, England, it had been painstakingly photographed and digitized, and was available in its entirety to the public, online. 

What first got Makael’s attention is that, visually, it’s one of the rare manuscripts that shows the existence of angels before the rest of Creation (something most Christian artists  _ and  _ Biblical exegetes of the era tended to avoid, since the creation of angels, and the timing of their creation, is not discussed anywhere in scripture). That element alone is unique (and correct—angels  _ did  _ exist before created the universe). But certain details of the opening, full-page illustration—the placement of the angels around the figure of God, what scholars termed their “breath” pushing back “a swirling mist”—startle her with their accuracy. Because in her universe, at any rate, God didn’t do the work of creation alone—he’d instructed his angels to help him. Specifically, he'd asked them to help him battle back the nothingness of his sister, Amara.  

Makael was part of that battle. It’s the only battle that she’d ever been a part of as a member of the Heavenly Choir. But it was important—her role had been crucial. What the artist had depicted—the series of lines coming from the mouths of the angels at God’s feet—wasn't breath, or, as one scholar termed it, “long streams of air bursting from the faces beneath the throne” which identified “these winged heads as the winds.” No. It was  _ song _ : the full-throated song of the entire Heavenly Choir.

It was song—its implicit order, structure, and the creativity enkindled by its composition—that held back the chaos of The Darkness long enough for God to speak the first sparks of the universe into being, even as the fight raged on.

Eventually, that long battle had ended with the creation of the prison into which God and his archangels had thrown Amara, and of the Mark that kept her prison locked fast. After that, Makael retreated from the front lines of battle in contentment, to sing God’s praises in the Throne Room, while he continued the work of building the universe—uninterrupted. 

Makael hadn’t been uninvolved in all the conflicts that happened subsequently: the Mark’s corruption of Lucifer; his hatred for humanity, which in turn sowed the seeds of discord and corruption in God’s perfect creation; his fall; his recruitment of human souls against Heaven and his subsequent imprisonment; the ongoing conflict between Heaven and Lucifer’s followers—Lilith, his Princes and Knights, and all of the demons that came after them. 

She wishes now she’d paid some attention to it all. 

In any case, this illustrator knew more about the actual process of creation than any human should. Which leads to further digging on Makael’s part: she turns to the text. Her Old English is rusty, but she’s able to translate some of the poem, murmuring out loud to herself, absently, as she does so:

“As yet was nought save shadows of Darkness … the Steadfast King looked down … He saw dim chaos hanging in eternal night, obscure beneath the heavens, desolate and dark.” 

Well. That definitely sounded like a reference to Amara: darkness, chaos, eternal night? Yeah. 

“The first day saw the dark and brooding shadows vanish throughout the spacious earth.” 

That  _ could  _ refer to her imprisonment—the Darkness vanishing as God locked his sister away for good.  

Makael turns to secondary sources next: what’s been written  _ about  _ the Junius 11 manuscript.

She quickly learns that the manuscript had originally been designed to showcase many drawings, but partway through the first of the five different poems, the illustration stops. 

_ Huh. Interesting. _

Then Makael stumbles across an article from 1972, entitled “Five New Drawings in the MS Junius 11: Their Iconography and Thematic Significance.” It’s the title that gets her attention: how could five new drawings be discovered in a manuscript that was created hundreds of years ago? Upon reading, she realizes that the “new” images only show up under ultraviolet light: non-inked, metal-point outlines disturbed the fibers of the vellum pages just enough to render them visible under that light spectrum. And she also finds out that one of those “hidden” drawings features … Michael.

The hair on her arms stands up at that. 

She rubs her arms briskly, disconcerted by the reminder of when she was nearly graceless, and heat and cold affected her vessel. But this has nothing to do with the temperature in her room or her grace: she’s onto something, and she realizes it so deeply that her very tissue is reacting to the knowledge. 

As she reads further, she learns that Michael appears in the  _ visible _ illustrations at multiple points where he isn’t mentioned in the text, with the illustrator going so far as to label him so all who lay eyes on him will be sure of who he is. Clearly, the illustrator found Michael to be central to the story. And the drawing of him that’s visible only under ultraviolet light? He’s squaring off with someone: lance and shield in hand. The article’s author, Thomas H. Ohlgren, assumes that it’s Lucifer, although he says the scene is unfinished—Michael’s adversary was never drawn. She studies the line drawing of the hidden Michael that the article has provided, then clicks back over to the Bodleian Library page and scrolls through until she finds the corresponding photographed page.

She doesn’t realize how excited she is until she notices that her fingers are trembling as she clicks on the scroll bar across the top of her page. 

Due to their nature as multidimensional wavelengths, angels have access to much more kinds of sight than anything a human can perceive: light is, after all, simply wavelengths, and perceived color is just different wavelengths of light made visible to the human eye. Makael quickly pulls up the ultraviolet spectrum of her vision, using her grace, since her vessel’s eyes are inadequate to the task. It’s faint, because the camera that digitized the manuscript for the Bodleian’s website wasn’t specifically designed to pick ultraviolet light, but she can make out the figure described in the article.

She holds her breath, and pulls up all the spectrums she has access to at once—and  _ there.  _ There’s more— _ there’s a figure standing opposite the ultraviolet Michael. _

But she can barely see it, even when she focuses her attention completely on that one spectrum of light where the additional figure is hidden. It blurs, and shimmers, forever staying just out of focus. 

She realizes, after a moment, that any human-made photographic device will simply be inadequate for picking up things outside of the wavelengths humans  _ know  _ about.

On a hunch, Makael skips forward in the manuscript to the sections of the poems that ostensibly remain blank, and that same blurry shimmer pops up in every blank space, indicating that, contrary to what scholars believe, the Junius manuscript  _ is  _ completely illustrated. 

She just can’t make out what those illustrations are. 

She drops her angelic sight and stares at the intractable screen in front of her, trying to digest and make sense of all she’s just discovered.

She has a strong feeling that whoever illustrated the Junius 11 manuscript all those centuries ago wasn’t human. There are simply too many insights into events that humans typically know nothing about. Even Sam and Dean don’t know about the role of the Heavenly Choir in the battle between God and the Darkness. They didn’t even know there  _ was  _ a Heavenly Choir until after they met her. 

Was the illustrator another angel? A demon? Or something else? 

Whoever, or whatever the artist was, they left just enough hints behind—those metal-point traces—for someone like her to think to investigate further: to go beyond the ultraviolet spectrum to see what else was potentially there, just waiting to be discovered.

Knowledge hidden in plain sight. 

Well, to an angel, at least.

Makael’s heart is beating fast. This could be nothing. But it could be  _ everything. _

She’s just about to click on a new tab to book a flight to Oxford when her email notification dings.

Distractedly, she opens up that window and sees that another one of her fishing expeditions has borne fruit.

In the months before she had the idea to start interviewing characters from  _ Supernatural _ , Makael had started writing some articles on the general topic of the show, simply as a way to spend her time. On a whim, she’d submitted a few of these to online magazines—and a few print ones. Some were obscure fan publications, but some were rather well-known entertainment magazines. She was surprised when a few picked up her articles and ran them. 

Upon her most recent return, she’d reached out to some of those magazines, asking if there was any way they might be able to opens some doors for direct interviews with any of the show’s writers. She assured them that she’d pay her own way if they could make an in-person interview happen, preferably on-site where the  _ Supernatural  _ writers’ room is located.

All of this? Well, she hopes an in-person interview would achieve a lot—the very least of which would be to see if she can find out any details about upcoming episodes. The one that just aired on January 31st, “Prophet and Loss,” was filmed between November 15th and December 4th, 2018. Which means that at  _ least _ three months before it aired and before the events occurred in her universe, the writers here knew what was going to happen.

If she can find out more about what the writers have planned, she can warn Castiel, help him and the others prepare for what’s to come.

And that’s at the  _ very _ least.

At most, she hopes to determine  _ how  _ the writers of  _ Supernatural  _ are pulling this off. Are they … God? Prophets of the Lord? Unwitting vessels that hold this universe’s version of the Winchester Gospels? She doesn’t know, but if she can figure it out by meeting some of them—well, she might be able to do a lot more than warn her brother about what’s going to happen next.  _ Fuck destiny _ , right?

The email she’s just received is from one of her magazine contacts. Not only have they secured an interview, but it’s with Andrew Dabb and Meredith Glynn.

Not one, but  _ two  _ writers. And one is Andrew freaking Dabb. As in, not only a writer, but the current series’  _ showrunner _ . 

It’s all part of a media blitz designed to promote the next episode, “Lebanon,” which just happens to be the series’ 300th and is airing this coming Thursday: four days from now. Which means her interview would be beyond last-minute, but her contact says the magazine’s editors enjoyed her “unique perspective” from past articles, and want to see if she can get anything interesting from the writers that they can publish before it all airs.

Well,  _ shit. _

She has no idea what to do.

She’s already pushed back from the monitor again, her eyebrows drawn together as she frowns. Oxford or California? She’s located on the Eastern Coast of the USA, so either way means a lengthy flight on a plane, and she can’t split herself in two. She has to make a choice about which to prioritize. And what if she makes the  _ wrong  _ choice? She wishes she had someone here she could talk to about it all. In the course of a few weeks in the Bunker, she’d gotten really used to bouncing her ideas off of other people. 

Right now, she feels very alone. 

And that’s when it happens—a prickling all over her body, and a  _ tug _ , as if something is trying to pull her somewhere.

“What the—” Makael stands in alarm, her eyes flaring icy blue as she pulls up her angelic vision and double checks the warding on her room. All is as it should be. Her room is thoroughly warded against—well, practically everything. Nothing should be able to find her, let alone try to summon her somewh— 

That  _ tug  _ comes again, harder this time. Hard enough that she staggers standing in place. She braces her hands on her desk and reaches for her angel blade, her alarm turning into fear. 

“Think,” she says to herself urgently. She’s been summoned before—by another angel, as it turns out—and that felt … different from this. Completely different. The prickling intensifies, and for a moment the vision of  _ her  _ room is replaced by an overlay of white-on-white: the Throne Room. A room she never thought she’d see again. It’s only for an instant, and then she’s seeing her room again, but the prickling and the insistent feeling of being _ pulled  _ somewhere intensifies.

And it’s more than that. For the instant she saw the Throne Room, she forgot that she  _ shouldn’t  _ be there. That she’d Fallen nearly six years ago, along with the rest of heaven. She’d forgotten about Dean and Jack and … and even Sam. Completely.

_ What does that even mean?  _

“Think,” she says again, fiercely, trying to keep her rational mind working, processing, analyzing, even as her skin feels like it’s crawling with bees, and she can’t make any sense of what just happened. Unless— 

“Time,” she breathes, her eyes going wide. “Someone’s messing with time.”

Her eyes fasten on one of the bookshelves, and she staggers over to it, her feet and body moving sluggishly in response to her commands. She grabs the book she needs and collapses to her butt on the floor,  _ willing  _ herself to stay put, to stay focused. If her room wasn’t so heavily warded, she doesn’t think she’d even still be here. With clumsy fingers, she leafs through the pages and finds what she’s looking for: a spell for the preservation of memory. 

It’s something that witches sometimes use as a cheat. Even though they are unnaturally long-lived, witches are, in essence, human, and their minds aren’t designed for the weight of centuries. Sometimes older memories, important memories, slip. Fade. This spell is designed to fix them fast for as long as the witch desires them to stay in place.

But this is going to fucking hurt.

Most things associated with witches demand sacrifice of some kind. It’s why she avoids that kind of magic almost altogether, preferring Enochian blood magic for her spells. Some bloodletting is necessary for Enochian magic, but those spells don’t feed off of darkness, or pain and suffering. The blood is just an essential ingredient; nothing more and nothing less.

Most witches would simply carve this spell into their own flesh to satisfy the pain and bloodletting for the spell to set. But in this case? Well, she’s not sure, but in that flicker of an instant where she was in the Throne Room? She doesn’t think she had a vessel.

Which means she’s going to need to carve this spell into her grace if she wants it to stick. And she’s not sure how much longer she can keep fighting this  _ pull _ . Resisting it is becoming … painful.

She pulls her angel blade from the waistband of her jeans and pushes back the fabric of her long-sleeved t-shirt from her forearm. 

“Okay, you can do this,” she tells herself. “Quickly, Makael.” 

She pierces her skin deeply enough with the silver blade that blue-white light bleeds through, carving the required symbols with care. It takes longer than it normally would, with the way the this incessant pull is interfering with her ability to control her vessel—and the steady drip, drip, drip of her blood on the carpet is an insistent reminder of the precious passing seconds.

One last cut.

She barely manages it, between the pain of the wounds, the pain of the pull, the blurring of her vision from the associated tears.

She gets out the Latin words to set the spell as quickly as she can, feels the spell set as she reaches the end: “Teneo, teneo, teneo … memoro, memoro, memoro.”

“Please let this work,” she gasps, blinking away the tears.

“Let what work?” The voice that speaks quietly resonates in a way that she hasn’t …  _ felt  _ in a very long time.

And it’s a voice she never thought she would hear again.

She looks, and sees—but not with the human eyes she’s used to, now. She looks with the limitlessness of angelic sight, and she sees … one of her very best friends. Vuriel. 

The thing is … Vuriel is dead. Killed by Raphael during the conflict between him and Castiel, as punishment for refusing to ally with Raphael’s faction. His death had been meant to get the rest of the Heavenly Choir to toe the line, but instead … instead they’d scattered to the four winds. Makael included. It was only Castiel’s interference that had stopped Raphael from personally hunting down each and every single one of them and killing them for what he’d called their “betrayal.” 

Even so, so many of the Choir died during Heaven’s Wars … 

She has the very human urge to reach out and touch Vuriel, her long-lost brother—but of course, multidimensional wavelengths of celestial intent cannot touch in the way she has become accustomed.

“How—” she begins, when another voice interrupts them.

“Did I tell you that you could stop singing, seraph?”

Makael freezes, everything going still inside of her as she focuses her attention on the Throne. Because, yes, she is back in the Throne Room. Really and truly, this time. And someone is seated on the Throne, but it isn’t God. 

“Michael.” It’s strange now, to speak without lips, without breath, without the vibration of sound in her throat.

But she knows she’s misstepped the moment she’s said …  _ thought _ the name at him. 

She hadn’t even taken in that the room had been filled with celestial music until it falls silent—the kind of utter silence that often precedes a death. 

Michael rises from the Throne, all white-blue fire, wings spread wide and threatening as he moves toward her. 

“Say that again.” The ice-cold voice burrows inside of her, making her quake with its implicit challenge.

The Heavenly Choir—so many of her brothers and sisters who have been gone for so many years, now, that it makes her heart ache to see them, even in her peripheral vision—move back from the two of them, retreating to the corners of the room. Even Vuriel.  

She doesn’t know what she’s done wrong, but she’s frozen, paralyzed with fear, even as something inside her whispers,  _ This isn’t you. Not anymore. This is the  _ old  _ you, and it’s a lie. _

That whisper manages to straighten her metaphorical spine. Whatever’s going on, whatever’s happening right now? The spell she laid is still set deep in her grace, and she remembers that all of this— _ all of it _ —is wrong. This isn’t the Michael that they’re currently trying to get out of Dean’s head. This is _ their  _ Michael—the Michael who is supposed to currently be locked up in The Cage in Hell. Which means something massive has changed. Something that’s fucked up  _ everything. _

As for Michael—either way, either one?  _ He’s still a massive dick. _

Michael pauses a few feet from her, and somehow, the icy-blue flames of the halo encircling his head flare even brighter. “ _ What _ did you just mutter, seraph?” 

Shit. Shit shit shit shit  _ shit _ . Right. Vessel-less, there is no “inside voice” here—you think with enough intent, you project it outside of yourself.  

This is not going well. At all.

Who would have thought an angel could become so maladapted to their true form?

“I’m sorry … God?” she guesses. There’s only one reason anyone sits on that Throne. And it’s not to play musical chairs.

And Dean would totally be snickering at that stray thought, and  _ that _ is  _ such  _ an inappropriate realization to have when Michael’s grace-filled gaze is boring into hers, mere inches away now, because now she’s suddenly trying desperately not to laugh in his face.

_ What the hell is wrong with you, Makael? _

She used to shake every time an archangel passed her by in heaven. Even Gabriel had her ducking her gaze and trying to make herself as small as possible.

“An indecent turn of phrase for an angel, seraph,” says Michael, coldly, and she realizes with horror that she’s just projected her thoughts  _ again _ . “But not altogether … imprecise. Something  _ is  _ wrong with you. You’re … different.”

And before she can do anything to stop him, he’s reaching  _ into  _ her, merging his grace with hers in the most brutal way possible. It’s invasive, and horrible, two beings occupying the same space without one’s permission, and he’s  _ looking,  _ searching for what’s different about her, and— 

She doesn’t think, she just  _ does _ . Mentally she slams down every protection possible over her entire being, recreating the wards from her room in one fell swoop. Wards that include those for keeping out archangels.

For a moment, everything is very confused.

But when her vision resolves again, Michael is several feet away, and she’s surrounded by an entire garrison of warrior-seraphs, the energy used to smite directed towards her from each and every single one of them—barely held in check.

“My Lord, are you all right?”

Another voice she thought she’d never hear again: Raphael’s.

If there’s anyone in this entire universe that she literally hates, it’s Raphael (AU Michael doesn’t count. He’s from another universe). Raphael is responsible for the death of so many of her brethren …  _ Was _ . He was.

She realizes only now that he’d been seated this whole time on the smaller throne to Michael’s right. Ha. He’s apparently Michael’s right-hand man, literally, in whatever fucked-up timeline this is.

And that’s what she needs to keep remembering: something has gone horribly wrong with the timeline. Because this  _ is  _ her universe: every single one has a slightly different  _ feel  _ to it, and there is no doubt in her mind that she’s back home. It’s just that nothing is as it should be. Which means someone changed something, and she’s got to figure out how, and why, in order to make everything right. Because likely she’s the only one right now who knows anything  _ is  _ wrong.

And she won’t be able to do that if she gets smited.

Michael doesn’t deign to answer Raphael’s query, instead straightening as if he’d simply stumbled over something rather than been forcibly repelled by a lower-level celestial being. But he’s focused on Makael as if she’s become interesting to him, and Makael doesn’t like that one little bit.

He moves toward her again, and the garrison angels part before him like water.

He stops when he’s close—but not as close as before, she notes. This time, his voice is quiet, but it rumbles with the resonance of the ground quaking during an earthquake. In the background, the members of the Choir prostrate themselves at the sound, and a quiver of fear ripples through the garrison members.

“I should smite you here and now for what you just did.”

Somehow, Makael remains upright. _ Yaay for imaginary spines.  _ She manages to keep that thought in non-projection mode.

Thing is, she can tell Michael’s trying to figure out  _ how  _ she did what she just did. Archangel warding isn’t something lower-level angels were created knowing how to do. It’s learned. And she suspects that especially in  _ this _ version of heaven, it’s not something that’s passed out like candy to any old angel.

She also suspects that wanting to know how Makael repelled him is the reason why Michael  _ isn’t _ just smiting her here, now, in front of everyone.

That rumble is quieter when he speaks again. “You’re lucky that you’re my favorite voice in the Choir, Makael.”

She bites back a witty (i.e. stupid) retort, like, “Oh, so you  _ do  _ know my name!” even as her brain is racing.  _ Her _ voice?  _ Her  _ voice is Michael’s favorite in the entire Choir? That’s just— 

“Put her in a cell until she learns proper respect for the Lord her God.” 

He’s addressing the garrison members, and they pull in tight around her, even as she contemplates that if she currently was in possession of a body, she’d probably be throwing up in her mouth a little at hearing Michael call himself  _ the Lord your God _ . She makes  _ very _ sure that she does  _ not  _ broadcast that thought. 

“And if she tries anything, I don’t care that she  _ is  _ my favorite voice. Smite her where she stands.”

Right. So this is happening.

She  _ could  _ try to preemptively smite her way free. After teaching her how to “boop” humans, Castiel showed her the correct form and energy smiting takes, but she’d she never actually practiced it, beyond how to draw up the correct energy, and learning in theory how to push it into another being—it’s not like you can practice killing someone without actually killing them.

It’s not something they’ll expect her to know how to do. 

But with this many garrison members surrounding her, it would probably still be suicide. Right now, staying alive and—well, not breathing, but  _ being _ —is essential.  

So she goes quietly, with one last look over her shoulder to catch a glimpse of Vuriel. He meets her gaze from the back corner of the Throne Room, looking and …  _ feeling _ (and that’s an adjustment, remembering that in their true forms, angels can often feel what another of their kind is feeling) frightened, and completely bewildered.

She understands. This isn’t who she used to be when she was in the Throne Room, and she has a feeling that the Makael who would exist here and now without the memory spell engraved on her grace would be very much like the old Makael—the one who preferred that nobody noticed she existed.  

They exit the Throne Room, and Vuriel disappears from sight. Angels can see much more in their true form than a human can, but the Throne Room was originally designed by God as a retreat: a place of privacy, where he could listen to the prayers of humans and be serenaded by the angels in the Choir—so no angel can see into it when the doors are closed.

A stray thought has her comparing that to a teenager’s room: a “do not enter” sign on the door, music blaring, distractions at the ready.

She shakes the thought away. 

Makael’s never been to Heaven’s Prison before. 

She rarely left the Throne Room, and had no reason to visit any celestial beings that were being punished. She knows something of what to expect from watching the show and seeing Castiel and Gadreel’s imprisonment there. But what  _ Supernatural  _ failed to show was the layers upon layers of warding woven into the very walls and bars of the cells: the energy they give off is enough to make Makael feel nauseous, even without a stomach.

She remembers, suddenly, that in this form she has functioning wings. Then she realizes that she is having one of those fight or flight reactions to the warding—only in her case, it’s literally. For a second, she wonders if she  _ could _ simply fly away. But what seems instantaneous to humans just  _ isn’t  _ to another angel, and she has a feeling that these garrison members are quick on the draw, especially when it comes to smiting.

They crowd her into an unoccupied cell—not that she paid much attention to the other cells and their occupants and the way in; she was too busy looking around and taking in all the layers of warding—and one of them slams the door shut with a gesture. The lock clanks into place, and the nearest angel is positively oozing derisiveness.

“Enjoy our very own little slice of hell,” he says, and it’s too intimate, too invasive, to be able to  _ feel  _ his voice and his words as well as hear them.

Goddamn, if she isn’t missing her vessel and the literal walls it provided between her and the rest of the world. Incredible. She’d felt like a fish out of water inside that thing when she’d first slipped inside. Not that she hadn’t been grateful for the gift that Sarah, the former occupant of the body, had given her by allowing her in as Sarah had slipped free from her comatose body. But still. It hadn’t been the smoothest of transitions.

She’s so preoccupied with that line of thought that she fails to react to the other angel’s taunt. She can  _ feel  _ his disappointment over that as he turns away, just like she could feel Vuriel’s fear and bewilderment a few minutes ago.

She’s gotten so used to having to read expressions through twitches of muscle, through gestures, and tone of voice, and expressions held solely in the eyes. 

It’s all so … strange, now, to be the way she was before the Fall.

Well, at least she’s learned some new skill sets since then.

Like how to pick a lock, both metaphysically (from her own research) and literally (through a set of lessons from Jack).

She waits until the last of the garrison members has exited Heaven’s prison, and then she begins examining the warding around the door’s locking mechanism.

_ You’ve got this,  _ she tells herself, careful to keep her thoughts self-contained.  _ You’re not the seraph they think you are. You’re getting out of here. And then you’re going to figure out what happened with the timeline so you can _ fix  _ it. _

With that in mind, she gets to work on figuring out how to escape.

 

**END SCENE.**

**  
Notes:  
** LOTS of notes this go around. First of all, apologies for the lag in posting. New job, lots of stuff happening in life over the past few weeks. It’s all been good, but I haven’t had a lot of writing time!

  1. **The Junius 11 Manuscript:** So I had WAAAAAAY too much fun with this part of the story. Hopefully you had some fun reading it! I’ve mentioned in the comments before that I have an English lit background with a focus in medieval literature, so I’ve had some previous fun with medieval references earlier in this series. I knew that in this entry I wanted Makael doing some research for stuff that might prove helpful from our world re: the Michael sitch, and I also wanted to see if I could find anything to play around with that was real. Boy, did I ever! Like Makael, I found the Junius 11 Manuscript by starting with a general Google search for all things angelic in medieval manuscripts. The first mention of the manuscript that I stumbled across was in a 2016 book called _Angels in Medieval England_ by Richard Sowerby. All the direct quotes I included from the unnamed academic are from Sowerby, as is the info about how early Christians struggled with the lack of info about the creation of angels in scripture. Okay, a bit more background on me: when I was working on my Master’s Degree, we were fortunate enough to have a prof from Cambridge University, England, come in and do a concentrated semester of work with us on medieval manuscripts: marginalia (stuff people sketched, wrote, or doodled in the margins of manuscripts or on blank parts of a document), paleography (the study of old forms of writing), and the importance of working with original manuscripts. This is how I knew that the Bodleian Library had a huge percentage (if not all, at this point) of their medieval manuscripts digitized and available online, since I worked extensively with one manuscript for the paper I wrote for his class. So after reading Sowerby’s stuff, I was able to access the Bodleian’s online copy of the Junius 11 Manuscript and do some digging around its pages, which was super helpful and fun. I also found an online translation of all the poems found in the manuscript, and, through my workplace, was able to access a number of academic documents about Junius 11 as well. From those, I learned details that had me FLAILING at my computer in excitement. I’ll talk about those below. But yes, the Junius 11 Manuscript is 100% real, it exists in our world, and you can look through the whole thing on the Bodleian website [here](https://medieval.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/catalog/manuscript_6318) if you’re interested. Just scroll down to the “Digital Images” section on the following link, and click on “Digital Bodleian (full digital facsimile).
  2. **That First Image That Gets Makael’s Attention:** Yep. That’s also real. Here is a full page copy, which is in black and white but is very clear:  So you can see at the center the bearded figure with the halo holding the staff is supposed to be God. Around him, behind him, and at his feet are winged creatures which are mostly interpreted as being angels (sometimes the winged creatures at his feet are called “winds”). And the sketchy, jagged lines that are at the bottom and extend upward are the artist’s vision of the universe pre-creation. Here’s a color close-up of the bottom and the winged figures described as blowing or breathing. If you look closely at the figure on the left, you can see a series of straight lines are coming from its mouth. This is interpreted as breath or wind by scholars, and is what Makael tells us is “actually” song. SO FREAKING COOL, huh??
  3. **Makael’s Role In the Battle for Creation:** I was not intending to write at ALL about Creation or God and Amara or ANYTHING until I found the image I shared above. And then, yeah, a lot of flailing happened at my laptop. Because I immediately could see a story there, and see what Makael’s role would have been within that context. It was also super clear how I might integrate the image’s content with the existing lore of _Supernatural_. It all sorta came in a rush and I just started FREAKING OUT in the best way possible. I still can’t get over that this all happened with a simple Google search and putting some old academic training/knowledge to work. It was like puzzle pieces falling into place. TOTAL rush for an academic and creative writing geek like me.
  4. **Those Poetic Lines About the Darkness? Also Real:** The first poem in the Junius Manuscript (a paraphrase and elaboration of the Biblical book of Genesis) literally talks extensively about darkness. Which I had so much fun with. I was a bit selective with what I shared for the story, but here’s the section of “Genesis A” that I pulled from (lines 103-134); the translation that I used is available free online from Project Gutenberg (italics my own, to emphasis the _Supernatural_ -y/Amara-y bits): “As yet was nought save _shadows of darkness_ ; the spacious earth lay hidden, _deep and dim_ , alien to God, unpeopled and unused. Thereon the Steadfast King looked down and beheld it, a place empty of joy. He saw _dim chaos hanging in eternal night, obscure beneath the heavens, desolate and dark,_ until this world was fashioned by the word of the King of glory. Here first with mighty power the Everlasting Lord, the Helm of all created things, Almighty King, made earth and heaven, raised up the sky and founded the spacious land. The earth was not yet green with grass; the dark waves of the sea flowed over it, and _midnight darkness was upon it_ , far and wide. Then in radiant glory God's holy spirit moved upon the waters with wondrous might. The Lord of angels, Giver of life, bade light shine forth upon the spacious earth. Swiftly was God's word fulfilled; holy light gleamed forth across the waste at the Creator's bidding. Over the seas the Lord of victory _divided light from darkness, shadow from radiant light_. The Lord of life gave both a name. By the word of God the gleaming light was first called day. And in the beginning of creation was God well pleased. _The first day saw the dark and brooding shadows vanish throughout the spacious earth_.” I also flailed when I found all this. Heh.
  5. **Those Ultraviolet Images? Also. Freaking. Real:** So the article Makael finds about the “hidden” images is a real article that I found, written by Thomas H. Ohlgren. And yeah: there really is an image visible in the ultraviolet spectrum that scholars believe is of Michael (amongst several others). Here’s a rendering of it from the article: Which, again, is pretty damn cool, right? (More flailing happened. At this point I was also yelling at my computer screen, saying things like “WHAT?!?!?! NO FUCKING WAY!!!! THIS IS INSANE!!!!!”). AND Ohlgren also talks extensively about how Michael shows up at all these weird points in the illustrations for Genesis where there is no corresponding reference in the text. I seriously could NOT have asked for anything more relevant to what I wanted to write about, since I was hoping to have Makael find information about Michael that might be relevant to Team Free Will 2.0 and have that info act as a bridge for getting her back with the team. I mean, HOLY CRAP. Hidden images in a manuscript for REAL? I realize that in reality, these were just the equivalent of pre-sketches, done with a nib without ink. But the traces this method of “sketching” left behind, and the way in which they were discovered, was super cool. And also, just FYI, most of the spaces for the illustrations in the manuscript really are left blank. The illustrations cut out partway through the first poem, “Genesis.” There are a few theories as to why, but a lot of people think that the design of the book was simply too ambitious for the illustrators to execute.
  6. **Those “Extra” Hidden Images—Not Real:** So of course the part where Makael is able to sortof see other hidden images using her angelic sight (although she can’t make them out enough to see what they are, due to the limitations of human technology in capturing the images—I kind of imagined what she could see as a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy of a REALLY blurry photo) _isn’t_ real! But, as I’ve tried to do in the past, I tried to keep this as grounded in “science” and reality as I could. If the angels of _Supernatural_ WERE real, and existed as multidimensional wavelengths, it makes sense to me that they would be able to see more than we can. Visible light is simply wavelengths that our eyes can perceive, and we know that other living creatures (like the mantis shrimp, for example, which you can read more about [here](https://theoatmeal.com/comics/mantis_shrimp)) can see TONS of colors (i.e. wavelengths of light) that we can’t. So to me, at least, it makes sense that a being made up of wavelengths could see more that what human eyes can perceive. And what better way to hide something extremely important from humans than to illustrate it in a spectrum that we can’t see and wouldn’t even know how to look for? 
  7. **The Potential Interview with Andrew Dabb and Meredith Glynn:** I’ve been wanting to flesh out for a while what Makael was up to in those months after she arrived in our universe (May of 2018) and before she started interviewing people from _Supernatural_ as the new season started (gosh, that feels like forever ago now, doesn’t it?). So this was the perfect opportunity to do so. I’ve also wanted for ages to examine more closely the role that the writers of _Supernatural_ have in shaping reality (or not) in the _Supernatural_ universe—it doesn’t seem like something Makael would ignore in the long term, especially after she’s come to know and love TFW 2.0. So this was an opportunity to gesture in that direction. At the same time, the conflict between going to the interview and going to examine the manuscript in England served as an opportunity to highlight just how isolated Makael now is again, and how in a very short time she got used to feeling like she was part of a team. Again, this also highlights her growth as a character (she used to enjoy keeping to herself) in that she’s actually missing company and input from others, even though she’s accepted that she can’t be at the Bunker right now. 
  8. **The Estimated Dates for Filming “Prophet and Loss”:** I actually pulled the estimated filming dates from one of the Vancouver crew’s Twitter accounts. Jason Fischer is a coordinator on the set of _Supernatural_ (he’s also an all-around cool dude who’s got a wonderful sense of humor). During filming, he regularly posts a photo of the official coordinators’ whiteboard with info about crew and cast call times, the episode they’re filming, which day they’re on in the 8 day filming cycle, and a quote of the day. He doesn’t post every day, but it’s enough to get a sense of what was filmed when. “Prophet and Loss” was filmed around the HUGE 300th episode party that happened on November 16th, 2018, so I believe that’s why the filming took longer than the typical 8 days they get (it was filmed over the course of 13 weekdays).
  9. **Why Does Makael Have Time To Cast the Memory Spell?** I figured there might be some questions as to why Makael is able to have time to do something preventative when everyone else (other than the Winchesters) is immediately “reset” into the new timeline. I have a few reasons for that: a) She’s in another universe. If you think of the temporal paradox like a series of ripples, it would take more time for it to hit her because she’s further “out” from the central trigger point, and the intensity of the “ripple” wouldn’t be as strong when it reached her, so it would take longer to “adjust” her to the new timeline. b) Like the Bunker, the Angel Room is heavily warded against all things magical. So something magical that’s working to change the timeline would necessarily have to get past her wards, which would slow it down and lessen its power. I think that between her wards and the separate universe, she’d get more of a heads up than, say, Castiel, who was in the same universe as the trigger point _and_ was outside of the Bunker when it all happened.
  10. **Vessel-less Angels:** Writing angels from the perspective of them being outside of a vessel was an interesting exercise. We’re used to seeing them being inside their human bodies, even when they are in heaven. Of course that’s because pretty much all angels had to find vessels after the Great Fall. But if they never Fell (which is what is implied in “Lebanon”) most would still be without human vessels. I had to think my way carefully through the language surrounding their movements (they wouldn’t walk, or step, or stride, for example) and the way they communicated with each other. I also wanted to think through what might be strange or awkward for a vessel-less angel who had been in human form for a long time. Hopefully, it all worked.
  11. **… Influence:** Heh. I had to find a way to use this term at some point within my writing, given its legendary status within the SPNFamily. One of the things I realized was happening in this episode (unintentionally, but nonetheless importantly) was that it showcased the continuing influence that TFW 2.0 has with Makael, even if she’s no longer with them. In the opening scenes we see her problem solving and researching, which is something that she and Sam both have in common as strengths. We see her giving some Dean-like ‘tude when she’s under stress, and thinking on her feet and rolling with the punches. We hear more about her training from Castiel. And we see her settling in to work on a skill that she’s learned from Jack (lock-picking). I was pretty excited when I realized I’d somehow managed to do this without setting out trying to do it! But I guess that’s a big part of what influence is all about.
  12. **Heaven During “Lebanon”:** One of the things that was hinted at during the episode, which I found absolutely tantalizing, was what was going on in heaven when the timeline changed. We saw a much stronger and less human Castiel, and Zachariah was back from the dead. I thought it would be fun to explore more what it would be like in heaven if the Apocalypse never happened. Who would be in charge? What would heaven look like under that regime? It took me a while to figure out that, duh, Michael would be in charge. I could see him getting impatient with the Apocalypse not happening and fully taking charge of heaven, rather than giving orders under the mantle of instructions from “God,” which is what seemed to be happening in S4 (since Castiel seemed to honestly think he was following God’s orders, even though the angels had been abandoned by that point). So I rolled with it. Vuriel is my own creation, of course, but I had fun bringing back Michael and Raphael. And there’s gonna be lots more fun in upcoming eps!



Phew! Okay, I think that’s it! Hope you enjoyed.


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